Laurie Baker Architectural style what was her architectural style? Baker's designs invariably have traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta Mangalore tile shingling with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape.
did she have any other designs?
did Laurie Baker have more designs other than the architectural style?
Throughout his practice, Baker became well known for designing and building low cost, high quality, beautiful homes, with a great portion of his work suited to or built for lower-middle to lower class clients. His buildings tend to emphasise prolific - at times virtuosic - masonry construction, instilling privacy and evoking history with brick jali walls, a perforated brick screen which invites a natural air flow to cool the buildings' interior, in addition to creating intricate patterns of light and shadow. Another significant Baker feature is irregular, pyramid-like structures on roofs, with one side left open and tilting into the wind. Baker's designs invariably have traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta Mangalore tile shingling with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape. Curved walls enter Baker's architectural vocabulary as a means to enclose more volume at lower material cost than straight walls, and for Laurie, "building [became] more fun with the circle." A testament to his frugality, Baker was often seen rummaging through salvage heaps looking for suitable building materials, door and window frames, sometimes hitting a stroke of luck as evidenced by the intricately carved entry to the Chitralekha Film Studio (Aakulam, Trivandrum, 1974-76): a capricious architectural element found in a junk heap.  Baker made many simple suggestions for cost reduction including the use of Rat trap bond for brick walls, having bends in walls that increased the strength and provided readymade shelves, thin concrete roofs and even simple precautions like shifting dug up soil into the built area rather that out of it. He advocated the use of low energy consuming mud walls, using holes in the wall to get light, using overlaid brick over doorways, incorporating places to sit into the structure, simpler windows and a variety of roof construction approaches. He liked bare brick surfaces and considered plastering and other embellishments as superfluous.  Baker's architectural method is one of improvisation, in which initial drawings have only an idealistic link to the final construction, with most of the accommodations and design choices being made on-site by the architect himself. Compartments for milk bottles near the doorstep, windowsills that double as bench surfaces, and a heavy emphasis on taking cues from the natural condition of the site are just some examples. His Quaker-instilled respect for nature lead him to let the idiosyncrasies of a site inform his architectural improvisations, rarely is a topography line marred or a tree uprooted. This saves construction cost as well, since working around difficult site conditions is much more cost-effective than clear-cutting. ("I think it's a waste of money to level a well-moulded site") Resistant to "high-technology" that addresses building environment issues by ignoring natural environment, at the Centre for Development Studies (Trivandrum, 1971) Baker created a cooling system by placing a high, latticed, brick wall near a pond that uses air pressure differences to draw cool air through the building. Various features of his work such as using recycled material, natural environment control and frugality of design may be seen as sustainable architecture or green building with its emphasis on sustainability. His responsiveness to never-identical site conditions quite obviously allowed for the variegation that permeates his work. CANNOTANSWER
Curved walls
Lawrence Wilfred "Laurie" Baker (2 March 1917 – 1 April 2007) was a British-born Indian architect, renowned for his initiatives in cost-effective energy-efficient architecture and designs that maximized space, ventilation and light and maintained an uncluttered yet striking aesthetic sensibility. Influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and his own experiences in the remote Himalayas, he promoted the revival of regional building practices and use of local materials; and combined this with a design philosophy that emphasized a responsible and prudent use of resources and energy. He was a pioneer of sustainable architecture as well as organic architecture, incorporating in his designs even in the late 1960s, concepts such as rain-water harvesting, minimizing usage of energy-inefficient building materials, minimizing damage to the building site and seamlessly merging with the surroundings. Due to his social and humanitarian efforts to bring architecture and design to the common man, his honest use of materials, his belief in simplicity in design and in life, and his staunch Quaker belief in non-violence, he has been called the "Gandhi of architecture".

He moved to India in 1945 in part as an architect associated with a leprosy mission and continued to live and work in India for over 50 years. He became an Indian citizen in 1989 and resided in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala from 1969 and served as the Director of COSTFORD (Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development), an organisation to promote low-cost housing.

In 1981, the Royal University of the Netherlands conferred an honour (the previous recipient of this honour, in 1980, was Hassan Fathy of Egypt) upon him for outstanding work in a Third World country. In 1983 he was conferred with an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) at Buckingham Palace. In 1990, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri for his meritorious service in the field of architecture. In 1992, he was awarded the Roll of Honour by the United Nations. In 1988, he was granted Indian citizenship, the only honour he actively pursued in his life.

Early life
Baker was born into a staunch Methodist family, the youngest son of Birmingham Gas Department's chief accountant, Charles Frederick Baker and Millie Baker. His early schooling was at King Edwards Grammar School. His elder brothers, Leonard and Norman studied law, and he had a sister, Edna who was the oldest of them all. In his teens Baker began to question what religion meant to him and decided to become a Quaker, since it was closer to what he believed in. Baker studied architecture at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, Birmingham, and graduated in 1937, aged 20, in a period of political unrest in Europe.

During the Second World War, as a conscientious objector, he served in the Friends Ambulance Unit. After a short spell on the south coast of England and mostly looking after naval casualties he was sent to China as a trained anesthetist with a surgical team, mainly to cope with civilian casualties in the war between China and Japan. However, after a year or two of this war area activity, he found himself having to deal with derelict civilians suffering from Hansen's disease — the medical term for leprosy. He was seconded to a hospital formerly run by an order of German sisters who were all interned by the Chinese as enemy aliens.

The War took its toll on Baker, and he was ordered back in 1943 to England to recuperate. But fate took a hand in delaying his departure by about three months as he waited for a boat in Bombay. During this time he stayed with a Quaker friend, who also happened to be a good friend of the Mahatma. Baker attended many of Gandhiji's talks and prayer-meetings — which eventually led to a more-than-casual friendship between them. This was also the time of the Gandhi-Jinnah talks and the height of the 'Quit India' movement. So though he felt the need to return to India, to settle and work here, Baker was initially discouraged by the nationwide animosity to the Raj and to all Westerners. But the Mahatma reassured him that though the Raj must quit, concerned individuals would always find a welcome place to work with Indians. In fact, Gandhiji showed great interest in the leprosy work in China, and the lives of the ordinary people  there. "It was also from the influence of Mahatma Gandhi I learnt that the real people you should be building for, and who are in need, are the 'ordinary' people — those living in villages and in the congested areas of our cities." Gandhi's idea was that it should be possible to build a home with materials found within a five-mile radius of a site. This was to have a great influence in his later life.

His initial commitment to India in 1945 had him working as an architect for the World Leprosy Mission, an international and inter-denominational organisation dedicated to the care of those suffering from leprosy. The organisation wanted a builder-architect-engineer. As new medicines for the treatment of the disease were becoming more prevalent, Baker's responsibilities were focused on converting or replacing asylums once used to house the ostracised sufferers of the disease (called lepers) into treatment hospitals.

India
Moving to India in 1945, Baker began to work on leprosy centre buildings across the country, basing himself out of Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh. Baker quickly found the missionary lifestyle - ostentatious bungalows, socialite gatherings, and the plethora of servants waiting hand and foot - too luxurious and not in line with his values and instead decided to stay with the Indian doctor P.J. Chandy and his family. The sister of his host, Elizabeth Jacob (Baker called her "Kuni"), worked as a doctor in Hyderabad with the same leprosy organisation. The two met when Elizabeth came to Faizabad to perform an operation on her brother and to take care of the hospital duties whilst he recuperated. Baker and Jacob found themselves sharing common beliefs and decided to marry.  However, as there was considerable resistance from both their families, they decided to wait. Work and travel allowed them only brief periods together, and they finally got married in 1948. For their honeymoon, they traveled to the district of Pithoragarh.  Once the local tribals there found out that Elizabeth was a doctor, people came to visit the couple in droves.  So immediate was the need for medical help in that remote region that the Bakers decided to build a home and hospital on the slopes of one of the hills on a piece of land no one wanted and stayed there to help the people. The Bakers lived in Pithoragarh for sixteen years before moving to Vagamon in Kerala in 1963 and some years later to Trivandrum.  Initially, their time in Pithoragarh was lonely but they quickly became friends with the locals, including the "maldar" Dan Singh Bist who "owned most of Pithoragarh" and helped them in their charitable work. Elizabeth Baker, in her memoir of her time together with Laurie Baker, The Other Side of Laurie Baker, discussed the Berinag tea that they shared that was "very special" to them, as Laurie was a man of exquisite and simple taste, who always loved the simple pleasures of life. In 1988, Laurie Baker  became an Indian citizen.

Architecture
While at Pithoragarh, Baker found his English construction education to be inadequate for the types of issues and materials he was faced with: termites and the yearly monsoon, as well as laterite, cow dung, and mud walls, respectively, Baker had no choice but to observe and learn from the methods and practices of vernacular architecture. He soon learned that the indigenous architecture and methods of these places were in fact the only viable means to deal with local problems.

Inspired by his discoveries (which he modestly admitted were 'discoveries' only for him, and mere common knowledge to those who developed the practices he observed), he realized that unlike the Modernist architectural movement that was gaining popularity at the time denouncing all that was old just because it was old didn't make sense. Baker adopted local craftsmanship, traditional techniques and materials but then combined it with modern design principles and technology wherever it made sense to do so. This prudent adoption of modern technology helped local architecture retain its cultural identity and kept costs low due to the use of local materials. It also revived the local economy due to the use of local labour for both construction of the buildings and for manufacture of construction materials such as brick and lime surkhi.

Baker built several schools, chapels and hospitals in the hills. Eventually, as word spread of his cost-effective buildings more clients from the plains started to contact Baker. One of the early clients was Welthy Fisher, who sought to set up a 'Literacy Village' in which she intended to use puppetry, music and art as teaching methods to help illiterate and newly-literate adults add to their skills. An ageing woman who risked her health to visit Laurie, she refused to leave until she received plans for the village. More and more hospital commissions were received as medical professionals realised that the surroundings for their patients were as much a part of the healing process as any other form of treatment, and that Baker seemed the only architect who cared enough to become familiarised with how to build what made Indian patients comfortable with those surroundings. His presence would also soon be required on-site at Ms. Fisher's "Village," and he became well known for his constant presence on the construction sites of all his projects, often finalising designs through hand-drawn instructions to masons and labourers on how to achieve certain design solutions.

Architectural style

Throughout his practice, Baker developed a signature style in designing and building low cost, high quality, beautiful homes, with a great portion of his work suited to or built for lower-middle to lower class clients. He derived creatively from pre-existing local culture and building traditions while keeping his designs minimal with judicious and frugal use of resources.  His buildings tend to emphasise prolific – at times virtuosic – masonry construction, instilling privacy and evoking history with brick jali walls, a perforated brick screen which invites a natural air flow to cool the buildings' interior, in addition to creating intricate patterns of light and shadow. Another significant Baker feature is irregular, pyramid-like structures on roofs, with one side left open and tilting into the wind. Baker's designs invariably have traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta Mangalore tile shingling with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape. Curved walls enter Baker's architectural vocabulary as a means to enclose more volume at lower material cost than straight walls, and for Laurie, "building [became] more fun with the circle." A testament to his frugality, Baker was often seen rummaging through salvage heaps looking for suitable building materials, door and window frames, sometimes hitting a stroke of luck as evidenced by the intricately carved entry to the Chitralekha Film Studio (Aakulam, Trivandrum, 1974–76): a capricious architectural element found in a junk heap. 

Baker made many simple suggestions for cost reduction including the use of Rat trap bond for brick walls, having bends in walls that increased the strength and provided readymade shelves, thin concrete roofs and even simple precautions like shifting dug up soil into the built area rather that out of it. He advocated the use of low energy consuming mud walls, using holes in the wall to get light, using overlaid brick over doorways, incorporating places to sit into the structure, simpler windows and a variety of roof construction approaches. He liked bare brick surfaces and considered plastering and other embellishments as superfluous.

Baker's architectural method is one of improvisation, in which initial drawings have only an idealistic link to the final construction, with most of the accommodations and design choices being made on-site by the architect himself. Compartments for milk bottles near the doorstep, windowsills that double as bench surfaces, and a heavy emphasis on taking cues from the natural condition of the site are just some examples. His Quaker-instilled respect for nature lead him to let the idiosyncrasies of a site inform his architectural improvisations, rarely is a topography line marred or a tree uprooted. This saves construction cost as well, since working around difficult site conditions is much more cost-effective than clear-cutting. ("I think it's a waste of money to level a well-moulded site") Resistant to "high-technology" that addresses building environment issues by ignoring natural environment, at the Centre for Development Studies (Trivandrum, 1971) Baker created a cooling system by placing a high, latticed, brick wall near a pond that uses air pressure differences to draw cool air through the building. Various features of his work such as using recycled material, natural environment control and frugality of design may be seen as sustainable architecture or green building with its emphasis on sustainability.  His responsiveness to never-identical site conditions quite obviously allowed for the variegation that permeates his work.

Death and legacy

Laurie Baker died at 7:30 am on 1 April 2007, aged 90, survived by wife Elizabeth, son Tilak, daughters Vidya and Heidi and his grandchildren Vineet, Lisa and Tejal. Until the end he continued to work in and around his home in Trivandrum, though health concerns had kept his famous on-site physical presence to a minimum. His designing and writing were done mostly at his home. His approach to architecture steadily gained appreciation as architectural sentiment creaks towards place-making over modernising or stylising. As a result of this more widespread acceptance, however, the "Baker Style" home is gaining popularity, much to Baker's own chagrin, since he felt that the 'style' being commoditised is merely the inevitable manifestation of the cultural and economic imperatives of the region in which he worked, not a solution that could be applied whole-cloth to any outside situation. Laurie Baker's architecture focused on retaining a site's natural character, and economically minded indigenous construction, and the seamless integration of local culture that has been very inspirational.
 
Many architects studied and were inspired by the work of Laurie Baker. The workers and students called him "daddy". Laurie Baker's writings were published and are available through COSTFORD (the Center Of Science and Technology For Rural Development), the voluntary organisation where he was Master Architect and carried out many of his later projects.

Awards 
   1981: D.Litt. conferred by the Royal University of Netherlands for outstanding work in the developing countries.
   1983: Order of the British Empire, MBE
   1987: Received the first Indian National Habitat Award
   1988: Received Indian Citizenship
   1989: Indian Institute of Architects Outstanding Architect of the Year
   1990: Received the Padma Sri
   1990: Great Master Architect of the Year
   1992: UNO Habitat Award & UN Roll of Honour
   1993: International Union of Architects (IUA) Award
   1993: Sir Robert Matthew Prize for Improvement of Human Settlements
   1994: People of the Year Award
   1995: Awarded Doctorate from the University of Central England
   1998: Awarded Doctorate from Sri Venkateshwara University
   2001: Coinpar MR Kurup Endowment Award
   2003: Basheer Puraskaram
   2003: D.Litt. from the Kerala University
   2005: Kerala Government Certificate of Appreciation
   2006: L-Ramp Award of Excellence
   2006: Nominated for the Pritzker Prize (considered the Nobel Prize in Architecture)

See also
 Hassan Fathy
 Geoffrey Bawa
 Muzharul Islam
 Charles Correa

References

Further reading
 
 
 Elizabeth Baker (2007). The Other Side of Laurie Baker: Memoirs.
 Venugopal Maddipati (2020). Gandhi and Architecture: A Time for Low-Cost Housing: The Philosophy of Finitude

External links

 Official Website of Architect Laurie Baker
 COSTFORD
 Video interview another interview transcript
 Laurie Baker: The man we will never forget Rediff.com
 Master mason by G. SHANKAR.
 Of Architectural Truths and Lies
 ARCHIPLANET article: Includes fuller list of buildings designed by Laurie Baker
 "Here was a Baker"- a tribute
 Laurie Baker Building Center, New Delhi
 "Significance of Laurie Baker" by B Shashi Bhooshan

1917 births
2007 deaths
20th-century Indian architects
English conscientious objectors
Converts to Quakerism
British emigrants to India
English Quakers

Members of the Order of the British Empire
Organic architecture
People from Pithoragarh
Architects from Birmingham, West Midlands
Artists from Thiruvananthapuram
People with acquired Indian citizenship
Recipients of the Padma Shri in science & engineering
People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit
Indian Christian pacifists
English Christian pacifists
Indian Quakers
20th-century English architects
Artists from Uttarakhand
Alumni of the Birmingham School of Art
Ruth Heller Gross  (1923–2004), professionally known as Ruth Heller,  was a children's author and graphic artist known for her use of bright color and detail in both geometric design and the representation of creatures, plants, patterns, and puzzles. She worked primarily with a combination of colored pencil and marker for her book illustrations. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she grew up in San Francisco, California, USA, where she lived until she died of cancer in 2004.

Heller began her career designing wrapping paper, cocktail napkins, greeting cards, and coloring books.  She then went on to start writing and illustrating children's books in 1981. After a 6-year struggle she found a publisher for her first book, Chickens Aren't the Only Ones. Her books are written in a rhyming verse reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan, Hilaire Belloc, or Dr. Seuss.

Biography
Heller received a degree in Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley in 1946.  She paid for her own education through secretarial work and proceeded to work as a secretary following graduation.

In the early 1950s she married Henry Heller and had two sons, Paul and Philip.  Ms. Heller completed two years of graduate work in design at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and got her first art job in the early 1960s, designing napkins, matchboxes, and gift wrap for Cost Plus. Henry died in 1965 and Ms. Heller poured herself into her career from then on, eventually expanding into illustrating puzzle books and coloring books for kids and adults.

In 1980, Ms. Heller visited an artists' colony in upstate New York, called Yaddo. She left that determined to start a new writing career. In 1985 she married Richard Gross who supported her work with enthusiasm until his death in 2002.

Most of Heller's books were published by Grosset & Dunlap. She wrote a brief autobiography called Fine Lines which was published in 1996.

Coloring books
These coloring books have designs in them on a wide range of subjects and are appropriate for children or adults.

 Color and Puzzle (1968)
  The Oriental Rug Coloring Book (1973)
 Designs for Coloring
 Designs for Coloring (1976?)
 Designs for Coloring: More Designs (1976)
 Designs for Coloring: 3 (1977)
 Designs for Coloring: 4 (1977)
 Designs for Coloring: Jumbo (1980)
 Creative Coloring Activity: Designs by Ruth Heller (1981)
 Designs for Coloring: Stitch (1984)
 Designs for Coloring: Owls (1985)
 Designs for Coloring: Geometrics (1990)
 Designs for Coloring: Butterflies (1990)
 Designs for Coloring: Cats (1990)
 Designs for Coloring: Birds (1990)
 Designs for Coloring: Flowers (1990)
 Designs for Coloring: Snowflakes (1990)
 Designs for Coloring: The Hebrew Alphabet (1991)
 Designs for Coloring: Optical Art (1992)
 Designs for Coloring: Seashells (1992)
 Designs for Coloring: Tropical Fish (1997)
 Designs for Coloring: The Far East (1997)
 Designs for Coloring: Ancient Egypt (1999)
 Designs for Coloring: More Flowers (1999)
 Designs for Coloring: Prisms (2000)
 Designs for Coloring: Insects and Spiders (2000)
 Stained Glass Designs for Coloring
 Stained Glass Designs for Coloring: Geometrics (1998)
 Stained Glass Designs for Coloring: Snowflakes (1998)
 Stained Glass Designs for Coloring: More Geometrics (2000)

Children's books
Non-fiction picture books used in schools and especially popular in ESL programs.

World of Nature series
 Chickens Aren't the Only Ones (about egg-laying animals, 1981).
 Animals Born Alive And Well (about mammals, 1982)
 The Reason For A Flower (about plants that have seeds and flowers, 1983)
 Plants That Never Ever Bloom (about plants that do not, 1984)
 How to Hide - a series on camouflage
 How to Hide a Whip-poor-will and Other Birds (1986)
 How to Hide a Butterfly and Other Insects (1992)
 How to Hide an Octopus and Other Sea Creatures (1992)
 How to Hide a Polar Bear and Other Mammals ( 1994)
 How to Hide a Crocodile and Other Reptiles (1994)
 How to Hide a Meadow Frog and Other Amphibians (1995)
 How to Hide a Parakeet and Other Birds (1995)
 World of Language - a series on parts of speech
 A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns (1987)
 Kites Sail High: A Book About Verbs (1988)
 Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives (1989)
 Merry-Go- Round: A Book About Nouns (1990)
 Up, Up and Away: A Book About Adverbs (1991)
 Behind the Mask: A Book About Prepositions (1995)
 Mine, All Mine: A Book about Pronouns (1997)
 Fantastic! Wow! And Unreal! A Book about Interjections and Conjunctions (1998)
 Color (a guide to how art goes through the four-color printing process, 1999)
 A Sea within a Sea: Secrets of the Sargasso (2000)
 Galapagos Means Tortoises (2003)

Illustration
Heller also illustrated five books by other authors and a Merriam-Webster dictionary for very young children.

 The Egyptian Cinderella by Shirley Climo (1991)
 King of the Birds  by Shirley Climo (1991)
 King Solomon and the Bee by Dalia Hardof Renberg (1994)
 The Korean Cinderella by Shirley Climo (1996)
 Blue Potatoes, Orange Tomatoes by Rosalind Creasy (2000)
 Merriam-Webster's Primary Dictionary (2005)
 Merriam-Webster's Alphabet Book (2005)

References

External links
 "Talking with Ruth Heller", by Beth W. Leistensnider, Book Links'', May 2003

1923 births
2004 deaths
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Artists from Winnipeg
American women illustrators
American children's writers
Canadian children's book illustrators
Canadian children's writers
Canadian emigrants to the United States
American children's book illustrators
Writers from Winnipeg
20th-century American women artists
21st-century American women Millicent (Millie) Jane Taplin (1902–1980) was a British designer and painter of ceramics who spent most of her career at Josiah Wedgwood and Sons (1917–1962). She was trained in painting by Alfred and Louise Powell, and supervised Wedgwood's ceramics painters. She became a designer of decorative patterns in 1929 and by the mid-to-late 1930s was one of the company's main designers, although she did not design pottery shapes. She was one of only two working-class women to become a successful ceramics designer before the Second World War. Her tableware designs were exhibited by Wedgwood at Grafton Galleries in London in 1936, and several of her designs are now on display at the V&A Museum. Her design "Strawberry Hill", with Victor Skellern, was awarded the Council of Industrial Design's Design of the Year Award in 1957.

Early life and education
Millicent Jane Taplin was born in 1902. Her father, John William Taplin, worked at casting sanitary ware. She attended school only until the age of 13, leaving to find employment in a milliner's shop. She took evening classes in art at Stoke School of Art, after being awarded a three-year scholarship, studying not only pottery decoration but also still lifes and botanical drawing, but did not study art full time.

Career
Taplin began her career in the Staffordshire pottery industry at Green and Co. in Fenton, where she was employed in gilding. She then started to learn the craft of ceramic painting at Mintons. In 1917 she moved to Josiah Wedgwood and Sons at their Etruria Works, where she continued her training as a painter, learning freehand painting under the supervision of Alfred and Louise Powell. When her training was completed, she worked as one of around twenty hand-paintresses for the company. In around 1926 she is recorded as a student at the Burslem School of Art. In 1928 she was promoted to supervise the paintresses at the newly established hand-decorating studio at the Etruria Works – from 1929, also including the hand-painting department – and continued in this role at the new Wedgwood factory in Barlaston. She was a member of the Society of Industrial Artists from 1932.

Taplin began to adapt designs by the Powells from the mid-1920s; her own first designs date from 1928. In 1929 she was recognised as a designer, and by the mid-to-late 1930s was numbered among Wedgwood's main designers. With Clarice Cliff, she was one of two working-class women to achieve success as a designer in the interwar period. Many of the other women designers at this time were middle class in origin, and they often had close relatives who were designers or artists; lower-class women in the industry were usually restricted to non-creative roles such as dipping. Taplin originated patterns for bone china, Queen's ware, earthenware and other types of pottery. Her designs in the 1920s were for ornamental ware; those of the 1930s were for tableware. Her earlier designs were for hand-painting, but after the Second World War, she also worked on lithographic printed designs. Like most women designers, Taplin only originated decorative patterns and did not create complete pottery designs, although some women such as Cliff and Susie Cooper did design both. Like other Wedgwood designers of the 1920s and 1930s, the designs were sold under her name, but only some of her work was individually identified, which was done via a painted monogram rather than a signature. She worked under the direct supervision of Victor Skellern, Wedgwood's art director from 1934, with whom she collaborated.

From 1956 Taplin headed the company's hand-painting section, covering both china and earthenware. She retired in 1962, having worked for Wedgwood for 45 years.

Designs and style
Among Taplin's early designs were "Kingcup" and "Sun-lit". In the mid-1930s she designed the "highly modern" "Moonlight"; "Winter Morn", with simple grey petals and leaves on a lavender background with silver highlights; and "Falling Leaves", a stylised leaf pattern in green and silver. "Moonlight", "Winter Morn" and "Falling Leaves" were among eleven Taplin designs chosen by Wedgwood for an exhibition of predominantly tableware at Grafton Galleries in London in 1936, along with a smaller number of works by Skellern, Star Wedgwood, Keith Murray, John Skeaping and others. According to Cheryl Buckley, these and other hand-painted designs of the 1930s were "simple, but bold" in their patterns, using "subtle" shades of green, grey, blue and lavender. Diane Taylor considers Taplin, Wedgwood and Skellern to present a "coherent stylistic approach... based upon simplicity and restraint", while Buckley characterises the work of male designers such as Skellern as more Modernist than that of Taplin and other contemporary Wedgwood women designers, such as Star Wedgwood and Daisy Makeig-Jones. Buckley considers that Taplin's tableware designs, as well as those of other women ceramics designers in the 1930s, represent "a clever application of modernism", working within the constraints on the British pottery industry of the time, finding a balance between modernist design and saleability to English consumers in a  diminished market after the financial crash of 1929. They were reasonably inexpensive and targeted at relatively young purchasers with "some taste but no money". Amy Gale characterises Taplin as "conservative", stating that she "updat[ed] the tradition of floral decoration."

With Skellern, Taplin designed "Strawberry Hill" in around 1957, a particularly popular design for printed and gilded bone china, which received one of the earliest Council of Industrial Design's Design of the Year Award in 1957. Several of Taplin's designs are preserved in the permanent ceramics collection of the V&A Museum, including "Falling Leaves", "Strawberry Hill" and an unidentified earthenware design of around 1937. Examples of her designs and painted work are also in the permanent collections of the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston and the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent.

Personal life
Taplin married in 1932, carrying on working for Wedgwood. In 1935 she taught painting and design at Stoke School of Art. Taplin died in 1980.

Notes

References

Sources
Cheryl Buckley, "The decorated object: Gender, modernism and the design of industrial ceramics in Britain in the 1930s", in Women Artists and the Decorative Arts 1880–1935: The Gender of Ornament (Bridget Elliott, Janice Helland, eds), pp 53–72 (Routledge; 2019 [2002]) ()
Lynn Knight, Clarice Cliff (A&C Black; 2009) ()

Further reading

External link
Free Hand Painting, Wedgwood Factory, Barlaston Photograph of the Barlaston factory's painting studio in 1950–60, showing Taplin

1902 births
1980 deaths
Alumni of Burslem School of Art
English potters
English ceramists
Women potters
20th-century ceramists
British women ceramists
Wedgwood pottery